Does inappropriate behavior hurt or stink? The interplay between neural representations of somatic experiences and moral decisions

Sharvit, Gil; Lin, Enru; Vuilleumier, Patrik; Corradi‐Dell’Acqua, Corrado

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aat4390

Cited by 14 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 43 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The amygdala is part of the primary olfactory cortex. The adjacent hippocampus is not part of the primary olfactory cortex, but it receives strong afferent input from the entorhinal cortex which is involved in olfactory processing [ 44 ]. The role of hippocampal volume changes in Alzheimer’s disease is well known.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationship between sensory characteristics and cortical thickness/volume in autism spectrum disorders

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) exhibit atypical sensory characteristics, impaired social skills, deficits in verbal and nonverbal communication, and restricted and repetitive behaviors. The relationship between sensory characteristics and brain morphological changes in ASD remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the association between brain morphological changes and sensory characteristics in individuals with ASD using brain image analysis and a sensory profile test. Forty-three adults with ASD and 84 adults with typical development underwent brain image analysis using FreeSurfer. The brain cortex was divided into 64 regions, and the cortical thickness and volume of the limbic system were calculated. The sensory characteristics of the participants were evaluated using the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile (AASP). Correlation analysis was performed for cortical thickness, limbic area volume, and AASP scores. In the ASD group, there was a significant positive correlation between visual sensory sensitivity scores and the right lingual cortical thickness (r = 0.500). There were also significant negative correlations between visual sensation avoiding scores and the right lateral orbitofrontal cortical thickness (r = −0.513), taste/smell sensation avoiding scores and the right hippocampal volume (r = −0.510), and taste/smell sensation avoiding scores and the left hippocampal volume (r = −0.540). The study identified associations among the lingual cortical thickness, lateral orbitofrontal cortical thickness, and hippocampal volume and sensory characteristics. These findings suggest that brain morphological changes may trigger sensory symptoms in adults with ASD.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationship between sensory characteristics and cortical thickness/volume in autism spectrum disorders

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We also fed the data to multivariate models predictive of subjective pain from brain activity estimated on independent datasets. More specifically, to maximize the comparability with our experiment, we choose the model from Sharvit et al (2020) derived from datasets obtained with the same device for thermal stimulation and the same MRI scanner than the present study. This is a non-linear model obtained by feeding principal components of brain activity into a Support Vector Regression with a radial basis function kernel.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distraction and cognitive control independently impact parietal and prefrontal response to pain

Silvestrini

Corradi‐Dell’Acqua

2022

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Pain engages and interacts with high-level cognitive processing. Previous studies documented that distracting someone through a challenging activity leads to hypoalgesia, an effect held to be mediated by parietal and prefrontal structures, who monitor pain-evoked neural response and maintain attention towards task-relevant events. Instead, alternative accounts suggest that challenging activities affect the ability to regulate one's aching experiences, due to partially-common neural substrate between cognitive control and pain at the level the medial prefrontal cortex, which could lead to hyperalgesic after-effects. Here we pulled apart effects of distraction and cognitive control on pain by delivering thermal painful stimulations either During or After (factor TIME) the engagement of a interfering Stroop paradigm (requiring high cognitive control) or a neutral condition (factor TASK). We found that TIME influenced individual assessment of pain, with less intense ratings associated to the During condition. This hypoalgesia was associated with increased activity at the level of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the posterior parietal cortex, in interaction with the insular cortex. This was complemented by multivariate pattern analysis who revealed that distraction altered the neural response to pain, by making it more similar to that associated with previous Stroop tasks. Critically, all these effects were observed independently of the nature of the TASK employed which, instead, led to a localized neural modulation at the level of anterior cingulate cortex. Overall, our study underscores the role played by two different faces of human executive functions, which exert independent influence in the neural response evoked by thermal pain.

show abstract

“…Additionally, it is also possible that social isolation (as caused by the confinement) might elicit a different kind of experience than Cyberball exclusion. Indeed, whereas isolation reflects prevalently the limitation of social interactions, Cyberball-induced exclusion is a more heterogeneous experience, which includes evaluations about the others' behavior, intentions and morality, and associated emotional responses (Giner-Sorolla et al, 2018;Sharvit et al, 2020). Indeed, the analyses of hybrid expressions reveal a dissociation between Cyberballinduced exclusion and the grouping factor, with the former triggering to a broad slowness in response times, and the latter instead leading to marginally faster choices for pain-neutral hybrids.…”

Section: Social Isolation Affects Pain-specific Facial Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Far from the eyes, far from the heart. COVID-19 confinement dampened sensitivity to painful facial features.

Antico¹,

Corradi‐Dell’Acqua²

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the last two years, governments of many countries imposed heavy social restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, with consequent increase of bad mood, distress, or depression for the people involved. Few studies investigated the impact of these restrictive measures on individual social proficiency, and specifically the processing of emotional facial information, leading to mixed results. The present research aimed at investigating systematically whether, and to which extent, social isolation influences the processing of facial expressions. To this end, we manipulated the social exclusion experimentally through the well-known Cyberball game (within-subject factor), and we exploited the occurrence of the lockdown for the Swiss COVID-19 first wave by recruiting participants before and after being restricted at home (grouping factor). We then tested whether either form of social segregation influenced the processing of pain, disgust or neutral expressions, across multiple tasks probing access to different components of affective facial responses (state-specific, shared across states). We found that the lockdown (but not game-induced exclusion) affected negatively the processing of pain-specific information, without influencing other components of the affective facial response related to disgust or broad unpleasantness. In addition, participants recruited after the confinement reported lower scores in both empathy questionnaires and affective assessments of Cyberball co-players. These results suggest that social isolation affected negatively individual sensitivity to other people’s affect and, with specific reference to the processing of facial expressions, the processing of pain-diagnostic information.

show abstract

Does inappropriate behavior hurt or stink? The interplay between neural representations of somatic experiences and moral decisions

Cited by 14 publications

References 43 publications

Relationship between sensory characteristics and cortical thickness/volume in autism spectrum disorders

Relationship between sensory characteristics and cortical thickness/volume in autism spectrum disorders

Distraction and cognitive control independently impact parietal and prefrontal response to pain

Far from the eyes, far from the heart. COVID-19 confinement dampened sensitivity to painful facial features.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About